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Archaeology, Politics and Islamicate Cultural Heritage in Europe

Chloë N. Duckworth [+–]

Newcastle University

Chloë N. Duckworth. Dr Chloe Duckworth is a lecturer in archaeological materials science at Newcastle University. She specialises in the archaeology of medieval technology, and the use of scientific analysis to address social questions in the archaeological record. Her current research focuses on technology transfer in the medieval period, and its relationship to socio-economic, religious and ethnic identity. She directs two major field projects in Spain: the Madinat al-Zahra Survey Project (Cordoba); and the Alhambra Royal Workshops Project (Granada).

David Govantes-Edwards [+–]

Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

David J. Govantes-Edwards is a Honorary Research Fellow, Instituto de Estudios Medievais, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal) and a PhD Candidate, Universidad de Córdoba (Spain). A translator and an archaeologists, David Govantes-Edwards specialises in the archaeology of technology and the production, distribution and consumption of glass and glazed ceramics in medieval Spain, where he worked for a decade as a commercial archaeologist. He coordinates several international fieldwork projects in Madinat al-Zahra (Córdoba), Alhambra (Granada, UNESCO World Heritage Site) and Reccopolis (Guadalajara), as well as taking part in other high-profile research projects as consultant and specialist.

Archaeology, Politics and Islamicate Cultural Heritage in Europe responds to the wishes of specialists in the history and archaeology of Islamicate societies in Europe to explore the integration of these societies into historical narratives. In order to deal with the multiple implications and wide ramifications of the subject matter, the book offers a collection of papers that cover a broad range of topics, including historiography, gender and family studies, material culture, historical and contemporary identities, historical heritage management, and archaeological theory, while paying attention to the peculiarities of the record in European regions in which Islamicate societies have played a major historical role (and others in which this role may not be quite so obvious, such as Scandinavia). These wide-ranging subjects find their commonality in the book’s aim of challenging the dominant simplifying narratives and their stress on interruption and exception.

The impact of historical narratives in national and social identities is reflected in a wide range of issues, including school curricula, heritage management, the organisation of academic departments, the presentation of Islamicate history and archaeology in the media and the politics of identity of majority and minority groups. The volume does not avoid these questions, but tackles them head-on, challenging the unwillingness of some academics to engage in potentially disruptive political issues.

Table of Contents

Bethany Walker is Research Professor of Mamluk Studies at the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg of the University of Bonn in Germany. An archaeologist and historian, her research has been published in numerous American, European, and Middle Eastern journals in both fields. With over twenty years field experience in the eastern Mediterranean, she directs two long-term archaeological projects in Jordan (the Tall Hisban excavations and the Northern Jordan Project), and is affiliated with numerous others in the region. Her recent monographs include Jordan in the Late Middle Ages: Transformation of the Mamluk Frontier and her edited Reflections of Empire: Archaeological and Ethnographic Studies on the Pottery of the Ottoman Levant.

Walker’s research in recent years has focused on rural societies, the dynamics of state-village relations, medieval Islamic environmental and agricultural history, local resource management, and ceramic analysis (primarily transitional and coarse wares).

Archaeology, Politics and Islamicate Cultural Heritage in Europe responds to the wishes of specialists in the history and archaeology of Islamicate societies in Europe to explore the integration of these societies into historical narratives. In order to deal with the multiple implications and wide ramifications of the subject matter, the book offers a collection of papers that cover a broad range of topics, including historiography, gender and family studies, material culture, historical and contemporary identities, historical heritage management, and archaeological theory, while paying attention to the peculiarities of the record in European regions in which Islamicate societies have played a major historical role (and others in which this role may not be quite so obvious, such as Scandinavia). These wide-ranging subjects find their commonality in the book’s aim of challenging the dominant simplifying narratives and their stress on interruption and exception. The impact of historical narratives in national and social identities is reflected in a wide range of issues, including school curricula, heritage management, the organisation of academic departments, the presentation of Islamicate history and archaeology in the media and the politics of identity of majority and minority groups. The volume does not avoid these questions, but tackles them head-on, challenging the unwillingness of some academics to engage in potentially disruptive political issues.

David J. Govantes-Edwards is a Honorary Research Fellow, Instituto de Estudios Medievais, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal) and a PhD Candidate, Universidad de Córdoba (Spain). A translator and an archaeologists, David Govantes-Edwards specialises in the archaeology of technology and the production, distribution and consumption of glass and glazed ceramics in medieval Spain, where he worked for a decade as a commercial archaeologist. He coordinates several international fieldwork projects in Madinat al-Zahra (Córdoba), Alhambra (Granada, UNESCO World Heritage Site) and Reccopolis (Guadalajara), as well as taking part in other high-profile research projects as consultant and specialist.

Chloë N. Duckworth. Dr Chloe Duckworth is a lecturer in archaeological materials science at Newcastle University. She specialises in the archaeology of medieval technology, and the use of scientific analysis to address social questions in the archaeological record. Her current research focuses on technology transfer in the medieval period, and its relationship to socio-economic, religious and ethnic identity. She directs two major field projects in Spain: the Madinat al-Zahra Survey Project (Cordoba); and the Alhambra Royal Workshops Project (Granada).

Over the past few decades, traditional narratives of European history and archaeology have been called into question, and the traditional evolutionary picture of European civilisation is progressively being replaced by a more complex and nuanced approach to the past. Yet, the presence of Muslim-ruled societies in the European continent is still seen as an uncomfortable parenthesis; an interruption of ‘natural’ historical developments. The presence of Islamicate culture in Europe is often approached from a perspective that distinctly emphasises its ‘otherness’. The time is ripe for a reassessment of the role played by Islamicate societies in European history, and archaeology must assume a leading part in this process. In this introductory paper, we ask: what is the future of Islamicate archaeology in Europe, and what should our role be in shaping this?

Chloë N. Duckworth. Dr Chloe Duckworth is a lecturer in archaeological materials science at Newcastle University. She specialises in the archaeology of medieval technology, and the use of scientific analysis to address social questions in the archaeological record. Her current research focuses on technology transfer in the medieval period, and its relationship to socio-economic, religious and ethnic identity. She directs two major field projects in Spain: the Madinat al-Zahra Survey Project (Cordoba); and the Alhambra Royal Workshops Project (Granada).

How do archaeologists deal with Islamicate cultural heritage in Europe, when the words ‘Islam’ and ‘Europe’ together hold such loaded connotations in contemporary discourse? The answer depends as always, on the context. In grant applications and book cover blurbs, it is de rigueur to stoke controversies, emphasising the current relevance, and risk, of our research. In the nitty gritty of academic writing, however, many shy away from these matters. Perhaps this helps to maintain historical objectivity through distance, or perhaps it simply serves to mask how embedded our research is in contemporary concerns. I argue that this pattern of ‘forgetting’ and ‘rediscovering’ Islamicate cultural heritage in Europe has a long, Orientalist pedigree; one that we must move away from, if we intend to develop a framework for interpreting Islamicate archaeology in its European and global medieval context.

David J. Govantes-Edwards is a Honorary Research Fellow, Instituto de Estudios Medievais, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal) and a PhD Candidate, Universidad de Córdoba (Spain). A translator and an archaeologists, David Govantes-Edwards specialises in the archaeology of technology and the production, distribution and consumption of glass and glazed ceramics in medieval Spain, where he worked for a decade as a commercial archaeologist. He coordinates several international fieldwork projects in Madinat al-Zahra (Córdoba), Alhambra (Granada, UNESCO World Heritage Site) and Reccopolis (Guadalajara), as well as taking part in other high-profile research projects as consultant and specialist.

Archaeology, Politics and Islamicate Cultural Heritage in Europe responds to the wishes of specialists in the history and archaeology of Islamicate societies in Europe to explore the integration of these societies into historical narratives. In order to deal with the multiple implications and wide ramifications of the subject matter, the book offers a collection of papers that cover a broad range of topics, including historiography, gender and family studies, material culture, historical and contemporary identities, historical heritage management, and archaeological theory, while paying attention to the peculiarities of the record in European regions in which Islamicate societies have played a major historical role (and others in which this role may not be quite so obvious, such as Scandinavia). These wide-ranging subjects find their commonality in the book’s aim of challenging the dominant simplifying narratives and their stress on interruption and exception. The impact of historical narratives in national and social identities is reflected in a wide range of issues, including school curricula, heritage management, the organisation of academic departments, the presentation of Islamicate history and archaeology in the media and the politics of identity of majority and minority groups. The volume does not avoid these questions, but tackles them head-on, challenging the unwillingness of some academics to engage in potentially disruptive political issues.

Nicola Clark is a lecturer at Newcastle University (United Kingdom). Her work as a historian focuses on medieval Islamic Iberia (al-Andalus), with particular interests in historiography and social history. Her teaching, however, ranges across the Islamic world, from the time of the Prophet Muhammad down to the early 17th century. HEr primary research focus at present is on representations of gender – particularly masculinity – in legal and literary texts from medieval Islamic Iberia (al-Andalus). She also remains interested in medieval Islamic intellectual life, especially historiography, geography and travel writing in Arabic.

UCL Qatar

Mikel Herrán sat his undergraduate studies in Archaeology in the Universidad Complutense (Madrid, Spain). He then completed an MA in the Archaeology of the Arab and Islamic World at UCL Qatar with a dissertation on Islamisation and Gender in Al-Andalus. He has worked in several projects involving Archaeology and Museums in the Gulf region and is currently working as a researcher for the project ‘The Transformation of the Moroccan Landscape in the Early Islamic Period’ at UCL Qatar, in collaboration with INSAP (Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine).

The aim of the present chapter is twofold: to discuss, in archaeological terms, how gender can be performed and enacted in Islamicate societies, and to put the focus on women and their position within these same societies. The study of women in al-Andalus is inlaid with multi-layered signifiers which influence gender performance beyond religion, including ethnicity and coexistence with non-Islamic social groups. In trying to go beyond the image of Muslim women as ‘other’, this chapter will study how hegemonies of femininity were created and encoded, paying special attention to domestic spaces and goods, as well as to the written sources.

Veronica Testolini is a PhD candidate at the university of Sheffield (United Kingdom), and has participated in different archaeological projects in Italy (Santa Crisitina in Caio, Castello Miranduolo and Brixen), Albania (Butrint), Austria (Feldkirch) and Spain (Guadix, MSc Dissertation). Her current research focuses on ceramic technological changes in Sicily between the Byzantine and the Islamic period. She is applying the chaîne opératoire approach to reconstruct technological choices made by the people living this period of cultural transition in Medieval Sicily. The main analytical technique employed is ceramic petrography, and she also uses SEM-EDS analysis to clarify those aspects that ceramic petrography cannot cover.

University of Sheffield

Peter Day is a professor at the University of Sheffield (United Kingdom), and specialises in ceramic production and other crafts in archaeological settings, both from a technological and an ethnographical perspective. He has carried out research projects, encompassing a broad range of periods and archaeological horizons, throughout the Mediterranean, but most of his research activity has been related with ceramic production in the Aegean. He is also strongly committed to promoting interdisciplinary studies, and takes active part in several interdisciplinary collaboration networks.

Islamic ceramics are often studied as objects of aesthetic value, with texts and elite material culture privileging views of acculturation and political subjugation. Here we redress the balance, allowing everyday pottery to shine through an appreciation of its technology, exchange and consumption. This offers insight into the lives of the ordinary inhabitants of Sicily, during the transition from Byzantine to Islamic rule. Such an approach has increased relevance with recent concerns over migration in the Mediterranean. By investigating cultural links, by prioritising human lives over an artefact’s value or otherness, we suggest an ethical approach to cultural contact and change.

Anna McSweeney is a Lecturer in Art History at the School of History, Art History and Philosophy in the University of Sussex (United Kingdom). A specialist in the art and architecture of the western Mediterranean Islamic world, her publications include an edited volume of Art in Translation on Spain and Orientalism (2017) and a monograph on the Partal palace at the Alhambra (forthcoming, 2019). She was a research fellow at the Warburg Institute in London with the Bilderfahrzeuge Project (2015-2018) and at the Museum of Islamic art in Berlin (M.I.K.) as an Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices fellow with the Forum Transregionale Studien (2013-2014). She has been a teaching fellow at SOAS, University of London since being awarded her PhD there in 2012.

Recent criticism in Spanish scholarship in particular of the term ‘mudéjar’ has led to its rejection as a suitable way of describing Islamicate art produced in medieval Spain. How then do we talk about the kind of art produced by these mixed communities in Spain? Where does the material culture of border communities fit in the contemporary politics of excavation, display and study? This paper will examine these questions from a study of tin-glazed and decorated ‘green and brown’ ceramics that were made in Paterna, near Valencia, in the first quarter of the 14th century. The potters were mostly Muslim, but they worked within increasingly mixed societies, for consumers with a wide range of cultural and artistic references.

Alberto García Porras is a lecturer in the Medieval History Department, University of Granada (Spain). His area of specialism is the production of luxury ceramic wares in the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada (13th-15th centuries) and their dissemination throughout the western Mediterranean. Recently, he has begun research on the landscape and settlement pattern in the Nasrid Kingdom, as a territorial manifestation of political power. He directs the Alhambra Royal Workshops Project (Alhambra, Granada, UNESCO World Heritage Site), and has participated and directed numerous archaeological projects in Spain and Italy.

It may be argued that the archaeological study of al-Andalus, which only began in earnest as a fully grown scientific discipline 30-35 years ago, is still in its infancy, especially if compared with other European archaeologies. However, work carried out since the discipline finally crystallised in the 1980s is already worth examining in detail. We need to carefully appraise the weaknesses and strengths of the discipline, as well as the obstacles and threats which put it in danger. Only thus can clear avenues of future development be outlined. In this chapter, I shall examine the evolution of the archaeology of al-Andalus over the last few decades.

Fahri Dikkaya is a lecturer at TED University (Turkey). His research subjects include late medieval Anatolia and the foundation of the Ottoman Empire, historical archaeology, Ottoman archaeology and archaeological theory, on which he has published and read papers and international journals, books and conferences. Notably, he has focused much recent research in the archaeology of Ottoman ceramics in the Balkan peninsula and the imbrication of Ottoman archaeology in south-eastern European historical narratives.

Islamicate archaeology investigates Islamicate societies and their material culture. However, how can non-Muslim members of society be identified by what we used to call Islamic archaeology? In this context, how can we define the archaeology of multi-national and multi-religious Empires ruled by Muslims, such as the Ottoman Empire? The population in the European part of the Empire was predominantly Christian. Should the archaeology of a non-Muslim village dated to the Ottoman period be identified as Islamic archaeology because of their rulers? Islamic archaeology is a product of Orientalism, a Western creation based on ‘a religious phenomenon’. This paper aims to discuss Ottoman archaeology in Europe and its problematic identification within Islamic archaeology.

John Bintliff is Professor of Classical and Mediterranean Archaeology at Leiden University (Netherlands), the Netherlands, and Honorary Professor in the Archaeology Department at Edinburgh University (United Kingdom). Since 1978 he has been co-directing (with Cambridge University) the Boeotia Project, an interdisciplinary programme investigating the evolution of settlement in Central Greece, widely-recognised as one of the most significant regional research programmes in the Mediterranean region. He is currently co-director in Leiden University, Institute of History, of the ERC Project ‘Empire of 2000 Cities’

The Archaeology of the post-Medieval half-millennium in Greece continues to suffer from neglect, due to the dominant focus of archaeologists, historians and art historians on the preceding periods of Greek Antiquity and the Byzantine Empire. Nonetheless growing progress can be monitored, chiefly through the long-term perspective adopted by regional archaeological survey teams, in which post-Medieval archaeology is not only given equal attention, but has shown to be a field in which Greece is especially rich: deserted villages, castles, feudal estates, ruined mosques and those gone but surviving pictorially, and domestic buildings are accompanied by distinctive and often diverse ceramics. Collaboration with experts in the complex world of Ottoman archives has yielded complementary data on population and economy at the town and village level, ideal to match to settlements identified in the landscape through surface prospection. The major transformations that the Ottoman Empire underwent from the 15th through to the early 19th century can now be tracked at the local level and in regional overviews. A re-evaluation of the Ottoman heritage is also slowly underway in Greek academic and public consciousness through these fruitful advances in scholarship.

Amila Buturovic is an Associated Professor at the University of York (Canada). Her research interests span the intersections of religion and culture, especially in the context of Islamic societies. Her latest book concerned the spaces and culture of death in Bosnia and Herzegovina, focusing on the questions of continuity and discontinuity in eschatological sensibilities, epigraphic texts, and commemorative practices in Bosnian cultural history. Currently, she is doing research on amulets, herbalism and alternative healing practices in Ottoman Bosnia.

The paper explores the way in which Ottoman funerary forms, which had by and large established a standard before the fall of Bosnia in 1463, became reconfigured through their encounter with the mediaeval stećak monoliths. As imperial culture thrived through a rapid process of Islamisation that had a lasting effect on all spheres of life in Bosnia, vernacular practices in the marking of death remained by absorbing and reconfiguring only some aspects of the Ottoman standard. This vernacularisation of the imperial form allowed the local style to re-affirm continuity, in space and time, with the mediaeval funerary culture on the one hand and non-Muslim communities on the other.

Vladimir Koval. Since 1999, Vladimir Koval works as a researcher in the Department of Slavic and Russian Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciences, and was appointed Head of the Department of Medieval Archaeology in 2013. He has published over 270 scientific papers and 2 monographs. His main scientific interests lay with Oriental and Byzantine ceramic imports in Eastern Europe and Russian medieval pottery. He has directed excavations in Rostislavl (Moscow region, 12th-16th centuries), the Kremlin (Moscow, 12th-19th centuries) and Bolgar (capital of the medieval state of the Volga Bulgaria, 9th-15th centuries).

The city of Bolgar, active between the 10th and the 15th centuries, was the capital of the Golden Horde Empire between the second half of the 13th and the early 14th centuries. The population of the city was multi-ethnic and multi-confessional, but the Islamic component was dominant. The city comprised wooden houses and approximately 20 public stone and brick buildings (mosques, baths, mausoleums). During the excavations of 1989-1990 and 2011-2016, the remains of a stone-and-brick central Oriental-type bazaar, which housed traders in luxury goods (including textiles from Flanders and China), were investigated. The bazaar was built in the 1350’s and collapsed after a fire in the 1360s-1370s.

Irina Shingiray is a research associate at Oxford University (United Kingdom), and a historical and anthropological archaeologist. Her main research interests include Western Eurasian nomadism, nomadic empires, and their relations with the sedentary world. Her particular focus is on the Khazar Empire of the second half of the first millennium CE. She conducts interdisciplinary research and fieldwork in the North-Eastern Caucasus region and examines the interplay between politics, religion, mobility, kinship, gender, and material culture.

Islam arrived in the Caspian Steppe from the territories of the Caliphate in the 9th-10th centuries AD. Its influence and material culture have been found throughout Eastern Europe and even in Scandinavia. This cultural transmission of goods and people was often facilitated by the nomadic communities of the Eurasian Steppe, such as the Khazars, Oghuz, and Bulgars, who themselves began converting to Islam. ‘Nomadic Islam’, however, is generally poorly understood. This chapter demonstrates that archaeological research is in a unique position to provide evidence for the Islamisation of nomadic peoples and for the pluralistic practices that followed this process in the Caspian Steppe.

Airat Sitdikov is the director of the Institute of Archaeology of Tatarstan (Russia), and focuses his research on the archaeology of the Volga region during the Middle Ages, and specifically in the archaeology of the Volga Bulgaria and its capital city of Bolgar (UNESCO World Heritage Site), where he also carries out active fieldwork, paying attention to different aspects, such as the archaeology of bio-facts and the articulation of power in the Islamic state of Volga Bulgaria.

Archaeology, Politics and Islamicate Cultural Heritage in Europe responds to the wishes of specialists in the history and archaeology of Islamicate societies in Europe to explore the integration of these societies into historical narratives. In order to deal with the multiple implications and wide ramifications of the subject matter, the book offers a collection of papers that cover a broad range of topics, including historiography, gender and family studies, material culture, historical and contemporary identities, historical heritage management, and archaeological theory, while paying attention to the peculiarities of the record in European regions in which Islamicate societies have played a major historical role (and others in which this role may not be quite so obvious, such as Scandinavia). These wide-ranging subjects find their commonality in the book’s aim of challenging the dominant simplifying narratives and their stress on interruption and exception. The impact of historical narratives in national and social identities is reflected in a wide range of issues, including school curricula, heritage management, the organisation of academic departments, the presentation of Islamicate history and archaeology in the media and the politics of identity of majority and minority groups. The volume does not avoid these questions, but tackles them head-on, challenging the unwillingness of some academics to engage in potentially disruptive political issues.

Chloë N. Duckworth. Dr Chloe Duckworth is a lecturer in archaeological materials science at Newcastle University. She specialises in the archaeology of medieval technology, and the use of scientific analysis to address social questions in the archaeological record. Her current research focuses on technology transfer in the medieval period, and its relationship to socio-economic, religious and ethnic identity. She directs two major field projects in Spain: the Madinat al-Zahra Survey Project (Cordoba); and the Alhambra Royal Workshops Project (Granada).

In recent times, various news stories have surfaced in which ‘Islamic’ objects were found in ‘Viking’ burials in Sweden. Unlike most archaeological news stories, they have shown genuine longevity, reoccurring in numerous online media formats for several years, beginning in 2015. The purpose of this paper is not to discuss the archaeological context of these discoveries, but to critically examine their online publication and replication. What is it about this combination of cultural references that makes them such long-lasting fodder for an internet that is ever-hungry for new stories? What light do these stories shed on modern European identities?

Benedict Leigh is an archaeologist and curator in the Middle East Department at the British Museum. Following an undergraduate degree in Archaeology at Durham University, Benedict completed his Masters in Arab and Islamic Archaeology at University College London – Qatar. He has excavated across the Middle East with a specific focus on Islamic period archaeology and the Archaeology of Arabia. Benedict has worked with various collections of Islamic art including the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, and the British Museum. In April 2015, Benedict was awarded a Peter Kirk Memorial Fund Grant to travel across Europe and conduct a systematic assessment of its diverse collections of Islamic Art.

Archaeology has always been an important component in the display of Islamic material culture. The majority of Islamic artworks in historical collections are from archaeological contexts, and the expanding field of Islamic archaeology is rapidly altering our understanding of Islamic material culture. This paper will provide a critical appraisal of the use of archaeology in displays of Islamic art across Europe, and look at the potential for archaeological objects and concepts to enhance Islamic displays in the future. In 2015, through a generous grant from the Peter Kirk Memorial Fund, I was able to travel across Europe and assess the use of archaeological objects and concepts in a number of museum collections. This research provided important case studies in the successful display of Islamic archaeology, and the benefits of including selective archaeological concepts in the broader display of Islamic material culture.

Chloë N. Duckworth. Dr Chloe Duckworth is a lecturer in archaeological materials science at Newcastle University. She specialises in the archaeology of medieval technology, and the use of scientific analysis to address social questions in the archaeological record. Her current research focuses on technology transfer in the medieval period, and its relationship to socio-economic, religious and ethnic identity. She directs two major field projects in Spain: the Madinat al-Zahra Survey Project (Cordoba); and the Alhambra Royal Workshops Project (Granada).

Aga Khan University

Philip Wood is Associate Professor of History at Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations. He completed his Oxford DPhil in 2007 with Professor Averil Cameron and has previously taught at Oxford, Cambridge and SOAS. He has published three books with OUP on late antique Syria and Iraq and is working on a fourth book on the early Abbasid Jazira (750-850), focussing on the works of the patriarch of Antioch, Dionysius of Tel-Mahre (818-45). He also publishes on contemporary issues of social integration and religious education.

Archaeology, Politics and Islamicate Cultural Heritage in Europe responds to the wishes of specialists in the history and archaeology of Islamicate societies in Europe to explore the integration of these societies into historical narratives. In order to deal with the multiple implications and wide ramifications of the subject matter, the book offers a collection of papers that cover a broad range of topics, including historiography, gender and family studies, material culture, historical and contemporary identities, historical heritage management, and archaeological theory, while paying attention to the peculiarities of the record in European regions in which Islamicate societies have played a major historical role (and others in which this role may not be quite so obvious, such as Scandinavia). These wide-ranging subjects find their commonality in the book’s aim of challenging the dominant simplifying narratives and their stress on interruption and exception. The impact of historical narratives in national and social identities is reflected in a wide range of issues, including school curricula, heritage management, the organisation of academic departments, the presentation of Islamicate history and archaeology in the media and the politics of identity of majority and minority groups. The volume does not avoid these questions, but tackles them head-on, challenging the unwillingness of some academics to engage in potentially disruptive political issues.

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